Sarvatra Tech helping co-op banks to catch up with digital revolution

Sunday, 19 August 2018, Pune: Sarvatra Technologies, India’s leading end-to-end payments and banking solutions provider, is making its mark by providing digital payment platform services to different banks in India and has recently on-boarded ‘Sevalia Urban Co-operative Bank’ as the 450th co-operative bank on National Financial Switch (NFS).

Sarvatra Technologies has played a vital role in digitising small co-operative banks across India, making them interoperable with large banks. Speaking on the occasion, Mandar Agashe, Founder and Vice Chairman, Sarvatra Technologies, said that on an average, the company is helping around 50 co-operative banks on an annual basis to adapt digital technologies like Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Unified Payments Interface (UPI), mobile applications and ATM services.”

In continuation to the digital payment enabling story for India, Sarvatra has provided digital payment platform from the smallest cooperative banks to the largest lenders in India like ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank and new generation clients like Paytm Payments Bank, Equitas Small Finance Bank, etc,” added Agashe.

The company has on-boarded banks across India covering 23 states and 3 Union territories and in 2018 transaction worth Rs 40, 000 crore was carried out using Sarvatra platform.

Agashe said that the company is helping co-operative banks to switch to these networks at just one per cent of the actual setup cost. “Once the setup is done, we ask the bank for an annual maintenance cost and a small amount of transaction fee. The co-operative banks get the benefit, as they are paid by large banks when ATM machines of co-operative banks are used by customers of large banks,” added Agashe. Speaking on the latest services of the company, Agashe said that the company is providing services like ‘Card Care’ under which customers can limit their transaction amount. “Similarly, customers can put off their card through their mobile phones through a mobile application, which brings an additional security to the customers’ account,” added Agashe.

Speaking on security features of payment switches, Sumeet Phadnis, Chief Executive Officer of Sarvatra Technologies, said that security features of payment switches are continuously being tested. “Besides, the company also has to follow Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. Similarly, the products are tested using 200 test cases of National Payments Corporation of India,” added Phadnis.

Speaking about the growth of digital transactions, Agashe said that currently about 80 per cent transactions are done through ATMs and rest 20 per cent transactions are through e-commerce, the point of sale system, Immediate Payment Service and Unified Payments Interface.

Agashe shared that with success of UPI in India, many countries from the Middle East have approached him for consultancy so that the technology is leveraged in their countries successfully.

I am happy with the pace of work (in developing the UPI solution for ICICI Bank). It is also very encouraging the way you are tracking the progress. I am more confident that we can meet the deadline successfully.